Posted by Dave
on October 14, 2013Comments Off on Tough on Welfare, tough on the causes of welfare; it’s not the poor!

The new stars of Miliband’s reshuffle Rachel Reeves and Tristan Hunt both made speeches/interviews over the weekend and they have caused wide dismay in the Labour Party or at least in the Deptford Bridge Kremlin. Mind you not sure what we were expecting. Reeves’ speech reported here in the Guardian, has allowed herself to be quoted, and thus allow Labour’s welfare policies to be summarised as “Tougher then the Tories”. One of the reasons Reeves was promoted and Liam Byrne sacked is that Byrne behaved as if he wanted to compete with the Ian Duncan Smith in a ‘being a shit competition’. Even if we want to be tougher, which the vast majority of the Labour Party don’t, no-one will believe us and since now we are now committed to repealing the bedroom tax and converting benefits into bricks, we have a different story to tell.

One step forward, two steps back?

Ed Miliband reshuffled Labour’s Shadow Cabinet earlier this week, 1½ weeks after the #lab13 and since three of Len McCluskey’s four horsemen of austerity have been either demoted or sacked many, particularly the Tory blogosphere saw this and reflected on it as a reinforcement of Miliband’s conference speech vector and a move to the Left. The full story is probably more nuanced than the stories told by the mainly right wing commentariat but you can take your choice from Red Ed stamps McClusky’s Marxism on Labour to Miliband punishes the poor messengers.

Maybe Legal

All wrongs righted;linking is not approval; opinion is my own, not my employers, nor organisations that I belong to or support.

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